Tuesday, July 26, 2011

3D vs. 2D world...Hip Hop, Motifs and Belatedness

I rarely listen to music at work. Not because the music distracts me from my work; rather, it's the other way around. I like to immerse myself, especially if I'm wearing headphones - it becomes very intimate to me, I like to listen to, study, all the wisps and nuances and what went into each composition.

Recently bought a long-popular hip-hop artist's latest award-winning CD because I liked the tonality of a few of the tracks of which I've heard bits and pieces. I'm not "up" on the latest stuff in general, and this seemed like a great place to dive in. I know this isn't new to most, but it's relatively new to me to pay attention to it to this degree.

(I'm aware I'm not supposed to like some of the lyrics, but I do respect the expression and rawness - that's what art is for, expression. Right? Challenging. Instigating at times.)

On went the headphones...and I became submerged. Swimming, floating, arcing through the three-dimensionality of the intensity of emotion and orchestration of sounds and feelings that went into this tome. I was working, but in another world. Another galaxy. Surrounded by the pulsating cells of the music as they propagated and filled the mindspace around me. Reality became like an ocean of glowing particles and note-creatures and possibilities and being.

After a time, I had to rise. Removed the headphones. And was plunged rudely back into the subdued two-dimensionality of Cubicleville, suppressed.

What goes on in my head during the music - I think that's the real world. It's certainly the better one.

And while listening...I remembered back to a time when I first dreamed of, then obtained, my Yamaha keyboard. The universe of sound and creation it opened up in my head. The swirling, overwhelming galaxy of possibility. Back then, I saw, heard, felt my future-self creating such compositions as are commonplace now - but that had not yet come to be, by anyone.

And now...sheesh. I hope I don't want a Motif. Cuz I'm not sure I have the time or brainwaves to learn to use it. And it almost now seems moot, since somebody else already got there first. A long time ago. I'm more than a day late to the party...and a dollar (or a few thousand) short for the Motif. (Mootif?) No! No! Please don't make me want it! Puh-LEEEEEAZE don't make me have to have one, Oh Powers That Be!

(sigh)

Okay...That was yesterday.

The mood of the music is still resonating in my psyche this morning.

The sky is grey in the desert today. It suits the origins of the work.
Threats of rain.

There's so much POWER in the work. It's not just punchy mad scratchings and screaming mindless anger and whatever chords and notes and instruments fit, or purposely don't fit, thrown together, raw... This is thoughtful, highly intelligent, complicated...the sinuous syncopations of the lyrics take me on an almost-physical, ebbing and surging white-water ride.

Musically, tonally, this is what I had aspired to myself before there was anything like this. So yes, while awed, I'm also angry, jealous, worried, fearful. If/when I bring anything with any similar qualities to the table, it will have already been brought-ed - and I'd be viewed as copycat, when I got there independently and quite possibly earlier.

Is it too late?

The Rio's sign is still lit, sparkling against the drear on my way to work this morning. A rare occurrence.

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